Materials such as cardboard are often compressed and baled before being shipped to their destination, for example a recycling facility. Once compressed, the bale of material is bound with baling wire in order to maintain compression of the material. In order to bind certain size bales of material, it is desirable to have a pre-determined length of baling wire already cut so that the baling wire may simply be wrapped around the material to be baled and tied with an appropriate tying instrument.
Often such compressed bales of material are located a distance from one another on the floor of a warehouse or other facility. Rather than cutting lengths of bailing wire unwound from a roll or coil of baling wire located at one central location and carrying long lengths of baling wire to different bales at different locations, it is more convenient to wheel a hand cart or dolly capable of holding a roll of baling wire from one location to another where the material to be baled is located.
Hand carts or dollys have been known to be adapted to support rolls or coils of wire so that a user may draw the wire off the roll or coil by simply pulling on the free end of the wire or strapping. U.S. Pat. No. 2,229,787 discloses a wheeled holder for a coil of wire comprising a vertical tube having a handle at the top thereof and a generally horizontal main tube having a pillar extending upwardly therefrom about which a rotatable coil support is rotatably mounted. Two wheels at the front of the main tube enable the cart to be picked up and rolled from location to location.
The device further has a guide which enables wire to be drawn off the coil and directed upwardly by the user. One difficulty with such a cart designed to hold a horizontally oriented coil of wire is that the cart is bulky and difficult to lift and transport. Further, the wire may tend to twist as it is drawn off the coil, through the guide tube and cut resulting in pieces of baling wire which are curved and twisted rather than straight.
One patent which discloses such a straightening device at the end of a coil unwinder is U.S. Pat. No. 4,134,826. This patent discloses a plurality of guides located around the periphery of a coil of wound wire which is supported on a rotatable circular plate.
The wire is passed through the guides before passing through a plurality of rollers which function as a straightening device as the free end of the wire is pulled off the coil. This device may be moved from location to location by pulling downwardly on a handle to lower a wheeled platform so as to make the coil unwinding apparatus mobile. One difficulty with this coil unwinding apparatus is that the apparatus is bulky and difficult to move from location to location because it houses a motor and transmission unit. Further, the device has a wire straightening mechanism for straightening wire being pulled off the roll of wire but has no device for measuring the length pulled off the coil unwinder.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,509,671 and 5,577,745 disclose hand dollys or carts adapted to carry multiple spools of wire. However, both of these hand carts are adapted to receive and hold one or more removable supports upon which the reels of wire are rotatably supported. When a reel of wire is exhausted of wire, a portion of the removable support must be removed in order for a new reel of wire to be placed on the support. This process is time consuming and requires substantiated physical effort to remove the releasable support from the hand cart. Further, each of these hand carts or dollys is lacking any means to straighten the wire once it is removed from the reel or means to measure a length of wire as it is removed from a reel.
A need therefore exists for a relatively simple and inexpensive hand cart or dolly adapted to rotatably support a roll of wire mounted on a rotatable support, the rotatable support being adapted to easily and quickly receive a new roll of wire once the existing roll has been exhausted. A need also exists for such a hand cart or dolly which is capable of straightening and measuring a length of wire which may be pulled off a rotatable roll of wire rotatably supported on the hand cart.
Therefore, it has been one objective of the present invention to provide a relatively inexpensive hand cart which is capable of rotatably supporting a roll of wire and has convenient and easily usable means to straighten and measure a length of wire pulled off the roll.
It has been a further objective of the present invention to provide a hand cart adapted to rotatably support a roll of wire upon a rotatable reel, the rotatable reel being capable of receiving a new roll of wire without the reel being removed from the cart frame.
It has been a further objective of the present invention to provide a hand cart capable of transporting a roll of wire having a free end which may be easily and conveniently be pulled off the roll, passed through a feed tube, straightened and measured before being cut to a desired length.